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Saturday, October 15, 2011

Groove

I hope you're still buckled up if you're riding this roller-coaster with me.

Or maybe it's more a case of "athletic schizophrenia." I have bad days and good days. Bad weeks and good weeks. This was a good week. I managed to get in a bit of a breakthrough swim, a nice bike ride and three successful runs, topped off with a pain-free 3.2 mile run this morning. My average running pace is slowly improving, while keeping my heart rate in the same range. My injuries still seem to be against me doing any back-to-back runs (which I did this week, and had some soreness afterward), and runs longer than around 4 miles still aren't in the cards. But I seem to have found a bit of a groove that's working. I won't get into great shape on this program, but I'll take what I can get. Through this whole process, I'm learning how to be patient (never a strong point for me).

What's interesting is that my heel seems to be doing pretty well, while my knee (same leg) has been acting up. The knee injury is at least 15 years old (had an MRI in '97 that showed degenerative cartilage and a partially torn meniscus), yet it never acted up during my marathon buildup early last year. I also seem to have a Baker Cyst behind that knee. I may have to finally go under the knife sometime soon. But, like today, there are times when things feel fine. There is a definite limit to my pace, volume and frequency, though.

So while a lot of my running friends are out killing fall marathons, I'm learning to be content with whatever I can do right now. Although I do have the itch to train for another marathon.

2 comments:

Great! I'm really glad that you've found a balance that works for you. I understand your point about wanting to do a marathon, but you're just reflecting societies' allure to that arbitrary race distance. It's a shame that 5K's don't get the kind of good press that marathons do (except when someone dies during one or has a baby immediately after one ;-), as that's a distance that I think you could improve tremendously at within your age group. Continue your swimming and biking too, and you're ready for a triathlon!